The Charity Commission’s safeguarding taskforce is also evaluating 5,501 incidents it received between 1 April 2014 and 20 February 2018: it has completed its analysis in 95 per cent of the cases.

Of those incidents, 3,000 related to potential criminal behaviour, all of which were reported to the relevant authorities.

David Holdsworth, deputy chief executive of the Charity Commission, said that despite the increase in reports to the commission there were still concerns that safeguarding incidents were under-reported.

"Despite the increase, still only 1.5 per cent of charities have reported a serious safeguarding incident to us since 2014," he said.